Cannot open the 5.3 Lightroom Catalog. Download «...» It is not writable and cannot be opened"message.

Hello world

I'm having a problem opening a lightroom catalog. I get a message "Lightroom can't use the catalog because it is not writable and cannot be opened.

The catalogue and thousands of RAW files are stored on an external drive.

Here are the steps that caused the problem in my view:

1 has worked with the catalog on my laptop. Disconnected the disk without closing first Lightroom (big mistake).

2 connect the external hard drive on desktop PC and did extra work. Closed Ligtroom (office) and disconnected the disk.

3 reconnect the drive of the laptop while original catalogue is always open (see #1 above). Clicked on an image at which point Lightroom crashed and closed by itself.

The problem now is that the catalog opens is no longer on computers. Any attempt to open the results in the message "Lightroom can't use the catalog because it is not writable and cannot be opened. There is no lock or log file that can be deleted, just the lrcat file and tons of files with preview of the data.

I hope this isn't a lost cause and I can still recover the catalog. There are 2 work days.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice!

Ok. I found a solution. As Ligthroom catalog is a SQLite database, you can use a database tool to fix it. Just download SQLite www.sqlite.org for your OS (Windows 7 in my case) and unzip into C:\SQLite for ease of use. Copy your catalog corrupted the C:\SQLite file as well as to keep things simple.

At the command prompt start > run, type 'cmd' and press ENTER. This opens the command prompt where you will need to run the following commands:

1 cd sqlite

2. echo .dump | SQLite3 yourcatalogfilename.lrcat > tempcatalog.sql

3 sqlite3 - init tempcatalog.sql newcatalogfilename.lrcat

After the execution of line 3, you may or may not see error messages. No worries, it simply truncated faulty records that is what causes the catalog to crash.

Now, copy the newcatalogfilename.lrcat into your lightroom catalog file and run it. You should be able to get things up and running to where you left, or to the point where original Lightroom Catalog has been corrupted in first place.

I hope this helps. It took me a few hours to find a solution, but it saved me at least 2 days of work. Original credit goes to the author of the article according to http://www.simplyness.com/more-photography-tips/recover-corrupted-unrepairable-lightroom-3 - catalog - with - sqlite.html. It seemed to have worked for Lightroom 3 and still worked for Lightroom 5.3 in my case.

Tags: Photoshop Lightroom

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